Interview with Tim Michael from Industry Update Magazine

Life wasn’t meant to be easy – just ask Mikael Paltoft, managing director of Treotham Automation, a leader in automation control.

Mikael arrived in Australia from Sweden nearly 35 years ago with little more than an engineering degree and life savings totalling $10,000.

Then in his late 20s, with a wife and three children by his side, he had no work prospects.

A few weeks after settling down in Sydney, Mikael landed a job selling car phone antennas throughout NSW for a friend from Sweden.

“At the same time I set up a small business on the side selling chains and accessories,” he recalls.

Mikael contacted leading suppliers in Germany and Switzerland offering to represent them in Australia.

After much persistence, German-based igus, a world leader in energy chains, high flexible cables (chainflex) and polymer bearings, and PMA, a leader in flexible conduit systems agreed to appoint Mikael as an Australian distributor – and in 1993 Treotham was born.

“I still have a close association with both of those companies today,” he says with pride.

Mikael named the company after his father’s business of the same name in Sweden.

Treotham was an established company in Stockholm selling mechanical relays, supplied mainly from Pilz in Germany.

“The word ‘Tre’ means three in Swedish (three partners) and they just added the ‘tham,’ which really has no meaning,” explains Mikael.

“The irony is there were only two founders when they chose the name.”

Mikael says he used the same name simply because it would be easy to register and there was no need to redesign a company logo.

For the first two years he operated from a home garage – a one-man band – unable to afford any employees.

He gradually started to expand the product range and was able to move his operation to a small warehouse in Sydney’s north.

During that time he landed another key distributorship agreement with Helukabel, a global supplier of high quality cables.

He was also the first in Australia to introduce Pilz safety relays to the marketplace.

“I worked for Pilz in Germany for a short time while I was studying (engineering), so I had a good relationship.”

Pilz, now headquartered in Melbourne, has since established a major presence in Australia.

For several months of the year Mikael was on the road knocking on company doors throughout NSW and interstate to promote his unique product portfolio to the marketplace.

“At that time you had to be more face-to-face with clients.

“I carried a pager with me. I didn’t have a computer at that time and was using a manual card system.”

In 1995 he employed the first full-time staff member, Lars Millfors.

Then as the company grew, he opened the first warehouse outside of NSW in Perth – an ideal location to service the then booming mining sector.

Lars was seconded to run the Perth operation and recently retired after more than 20 years with the company.

“For the first six years cashflow was very tight – it was a real struggle,” says Mikael.

But his first big break came in 1996 when his company was chosen to supply all the control cables for the launch of Fairfax Media’s multi-million dollar printing complex at Chullora in Sydney’s west.

“With that contract we were able to move to bigger premises into a new office warehouse in Brookvale.”